A Room of Ones Own

1
A Room of Ones Own

• Section 5

2
Lodge

• Features of Modernist Novel
• Generalisation about the mode of writing
• Languages twofold character Selection
  (Metaphor) combination (Metonymy)
• Wide range of artistic phenomena as either
  metaphoric or metonymic
• Poetry (metaphoric) vs Prose (metonymic)
• Ulysses

3
Ulysses (Metaphoric pole)
4
Ulysses (Metonymic Pole)
5
Section 5

• "there are almost as many books written by women
  now as men" (76). She reports with evident
  pleasure that female writers have branched out
  into new genres that had been off limits to them
  in the recent past (76).Woolf begins her
  exploration of these new works by looking at a
  first novel, Life's Adventure, by Mary
  Carmichael. Mary Carmichael is, of course, one
  of Woolf's fictional pseudonyms, and Life's
  Adventure is a device allowing Woolf to comment
  on general trends through the specific critique
  of an imaginary novel (it also might be a subtle
  way for Woolf to make fun of her own writing).
  Here she observes that the "terseness" of
  Carmichael's style may be an indication of an
  overcompensating desire to counteract a
  stereotype that suggested women's writing was
  "flowery" and "sentimental" (77).Woolf
  continues reading and is startled to come across
  the sentence "'Chloe liked Olivia'" (78).

6
"'Chloe liked Olivia'"

• Women and Fiction Woolf points to the social
  changes suggested by this one sentence,
  indicating that "Chloe liked Olivia perhaps for
  the first time in literature" (78). She explains
  that women in literature have been depicted
  almost exclusively in relation to the men (or
  families) in their lives. She imagines what would
  have happened to literature if the same
  restrictions had been applied to men i.e., if
  men "were only represented in literature as the
  lovers of women, and were never the friends of
  men, soldiers, thinkers, dreamers" (80). She then
  argues that literature has been greatly
  impoverished because of the neglect of women's
  lives and experiences.

7
Proliferation of differences

• As she contemplates "the extremely complex force
  of femininity", she says, "it would be a thousand
  pities if it were hindered or wasted, for it was
  won by centuries of the most drastic discipline,
  and there is nothing to take its place. It would
  be a thousand pities if women wrote like men, or
  lived like men, or looked like men, for if two
  sexes are quite inadequate, considering the
  vastness and variety of the world, how should we
  manage with one only?" (84). In this passage,
  Woolf celebrates the differences between the
  sexes even as she asks us to reconsider the
  contributions of women.Truth Woolf encourages
  her fictional author to reveal the inner world of
  women by exploring her own psyche. She suggests
  that rigorous self-examination, including a
  willingness to focus on both the good and the
  bad, is essential for good art. She then extends
  this idea of truthfulness to the examination of
  male characters, suggesting that a willingness to
  laugh, "without bitterness," at the
  "peculiarities" of men is a healthy literary
  approach (86). She does not ask women to
  represent men's flaws in order to increase the
  division and animosity between the sexes but says
  rather, "Be truthful, . . . and the result is
  bound to be amazingly interesting. Comedy is
  bound to be enriched. New facts are bound to be
  discovered" (87).Woolf then returns to her
  examination of Mary Carmichael's first novel. She
  finds herself unable to overlook the many faults
  in the work and suggests that Ms. Carmichael
  simply does not possess the talent of some of the
  female writers who preceded her. She grants,
  however, that the comparative freedom of Ms.
  Carmichael's life has had a beneficial influence
  on her work. Of her abilities Woolf notes that
  "she wrote as a woman, but as a woman who has
  forgotten that she is a woman" (88).

8
Conclusion

• Woolf concludes by saying, "give her another
  hundred years . . . give her a room of her
  own and five hundred a year, let her speak her
  mind and leave out half that she now puts in, and
  she will write a better book one of these days.
  She will be a poet, I said, putting Life's
  Adventure, by Mary Carmichael, at the end of the
  shelf, in another hundred years time (89-90).